Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1887-02-21
RENTED REVELRY.
Facts About ihe French Balls of New
York-Hisarious Vice Hired at
So Much per Hour.
Professional Dancers Engaged to DO the
Can Gan, While silly GudE.ons I'm
agine tho Thing Is Genuine.
Providence journal.

LuOHue VI uOlIl SeAes. 1ASSS oAAiS aAc
not what they are put up to be. They
are not tirst-class opportunities for in
dulging IN wickedness. All the vice there
is in them is made to order, hired and
exhibited like 6 stage performance.
In order TO understand these curious
balls let US understand one from its in
ceptlon. The company getting it up is
formed either out of club or an especial
syndicate of spectators who are backed
by liquor dealers, agents of foreign wines
or American WHISTLES and cigar manufac-
turers. Either that or they 60 into the
scheme to sell out the bar and restaurant
privileges for enough money 10 in
sure handsome profit before u cent is
expended. Next the Academy Of Music
is rented and the date advertised. After
this the town is flooded with tickets.
These are always notable works of art,
snowy pictures of a can-can or merry
group of reckless masters. These
pictures are either suggestive or
downright vicious. In some years
they are not too bad to show to &
lady--in other years they are. However,
ladies have nothing to do with French
/
So" and hundreds of gudgeons buy them,
but no one who understands the game
ever thinks of paying for one. They are
distributed among the principal bar
rooms and worse places of resort, and
peddled or given away by the bar-tenders
and demi-monde The FOUNDERS about
town are not fools enough to pay, know
| ing, as they do, that when they have
/ Inn hai rtn for bO
wine and hat and cloak checks they are
certain to be at least $50 or perhaps $50
out. Therefore they go TO the ball man
ager or their fsvcrite bar man aud get
! ticket for nothing.
When the night arrives the parQuet st
the Academy is boarded over. French
and other flags, and shields bearing
comic pictures, and stands of flowers,
and perhaps fountain of scented water,
have given the great theater ballroom
appearance. Bands are scattered about on
the stage and in the galleries. A lot
of hired masker, form a procession, and
the other maskers fail in behind These
other meskers are women of evil lives and
young college students, bartend-
ers, boyish debauches and silly
countrymen. The adult New Yorker
never appears except in even
ing dress, and insists that his female
friend shall go in regular ballroom attire.
He never dances, and he does not permit
her to do so, as Iule. There are some
comic stage performances and ballet Or
two, and the the ball begins. But it Ian
guishes. The public sits around in
the boxes looking on, or in the gal
lery seats drinking. The dancers
are few, and men are sent around to urge
people to dance, lest the thing be a fiat
failure. Countrymen are promised part
ners, and the college boys and gilded
stripplings are only too eager to Join the
others, never expecting that these others
are hired for from 81 to $50 for the night,
according TO what sCrt OF dancing they
have to do.
| 1t is q garrulous, bibulous, dubious
crowd that you lind yourself in. You
would have to be very peculiar man if
you could complacently imagine having
your name printed among the names Of
the others. The women around you are
all of the loud and staggering stamp,
and the men are such as you despise or
shun for various reasons. You notice that
the men about town from the Hoffman
! House bar-roOm and the fast clubs are
not present. Wait until between mid
night and l O'Clock and you will see
them. At that time the great theater be-
comes packed and by q host of men in
evening dress, who bring no womeJ, put
who drink almost as fast as g repeating
rifle can shoot. Their idea has been 10
keep away until the crowd has lunched
and is hslf tipsy. Then is to come the
widely advertised excitement.
| 1t comes, but, as l said, it pals. 1t is
| too transparently fraudulent for endur-
ance. Men from other parts of the
country, VINO never saw decency set at
naught in public, swallow it, and perhaps
feel delicious sense q danger and guilt
while looking at or sharing in it,
and so do the striplings, to whom all
Of life is new. But what is it.?
Why, for instance, suddenly q
quadrille or waltz breaks up, and
everybody PUSHES to the middle of the
| floor, where, il the hollow of circle half
g dozen rows deep, man and woman are
dancing can-can. Both seem slightly
tiBsy and wholly reckless. She thrashes
the air with her skirts, never letting 90 of
them, but raising and swaying and toss
ing them madly while she pirouettes and
sometimes kicks above her head. He
! dances in exact time with her, and
uses pantomimic actions that it is not
necessary or permissible to describe.
The crowd breaks and runs to another
place where tall man is dancing with a
young girl in a balloon-like dress OF
bright scarlet. At times be catches both
her hands and vaults her over his Shout
ders. Perhaps she ends her performance
with a s0mersault. 1t is sometimes done.
"Who is he? Who is she:" the voices
cry.
"Whv, he's broker, AID she's a clerk
in Broadway candy store" the whisper
runs.
Bah. how silly. Csn not every ore see
that this is commercial vice, rented by the
night; that this man is professional ath-
lete and dsucer, and the woman is his
companion or partner in business, q bal
let-dancer, or circus-rider, or athlete?
Every now and then there is a genuine
bit Of delirium. Some young woman,
full Of wine, rushes upon the waxed
floor, and grasping her skirts begins a
can-can. But see, an orderly puts his
hands on her shoulders and marches her
off the floor. If she does not behave
after that she will be marched out into
the street. There must be nothing gen
I rina no ha II